Currently, standard treatment regimens for oral administration of medications for treatment of a number of conditions have clear limitations with regard to both efficacy and toxicity. Routes of administration, formulations and dosage control among other attributes contribute to these limitations.
Reproducible and effective drug delivery technology represents an area of active research and controlled drug delivery systems offer numerous advantages relative to conventional dosage forms, which include improved efficacy, reduced toxicity, as well as improved patient compliance and convenience. This is particularly relevant to the treatment of pain, more specifically: acute, intermittent and breakthrough pain.
Medications based on a variety of routes of administration and the development of new and improved dosage forms for the treatment of a large number of medical conditions, such as pain, is an ongoing process. There remains a need to develop safer drug dosage forms without the fluctuation in efficacious levels that are seen with medications using current commercially available dosage forms. Currently available treatment regimes for treatment of pain often fail to provide patients with sufficient or consistent therapeutic effect, often due to a slow, erratic onset of action and the difficulty in adjusting and controlling doses such that the medical condition is not treated effectively.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,974,590, 6,764,696, 6,641,838, 6,585,997, 6,509,036, 6,391,335, 6,350,470, 6,200,604 and US Patent Publication Nos. 20050176790, 20050142197 and 20050142198 describe pharmaceutical combinations of active compounds such as fentanyl and congeners thereof in combination with an effervescent agent used as a penetration enhancer to influence the permeability of the active compound across the buccal, sublingual, and gingival mucosa.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,761,910 and 6,759,059 and U.S. Patent Publication No. 20040213855 disclose pharmaceutical compositions for the treatment of acute disorders such as pain by sublingual administration of an essentially water-free, ordered mixture of microparticles with at least one pharmaceutically active agent adhered to the surfaces of the carrier particles by way of a bioadhesion and/or mucoadhesion promoting agent. U.S. Pat. No. 6,759,059 discloses compositions and methods for sublingual administration of fentanyl or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof using a tablet which is approximately 100 mg in size.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,800,832 and 6,159,498 (Tapolsky, et al.), and U.S. Patent Publication Nos. 20030194420 and 20050013845 disclose a water soluble, biodegradable drug delivery device, e.g., a bilayer film disk having an adhesive layer and a backing layer, both water-soluble, which adheres to mucosal surfaces.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,682,716; 6,855,310; 7,070,762 and 7,070,764 and (Rabinowitz, et al.), disclose delivery of an analgesic via the inhalation route using a method which comprises: a) heating a thin layer of analgesic drug on a solid support to form a vapor; and, b) passing air through the heated vapor to produce aerosol particles.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,252,981 (Zhang et al.) discloses oral mucosal drug delivery as an alternative method of systemic drug delivery formulation and method for oral transmucosal delivery of a pharmaceutical. The invention provides a drug formulation comprising a solid pharmaceutical agent in solid solution with a dissolution agent in solid form, yielding a solid solution. The solid solution formulation may be further combined with buffers and other excipients as needed in order to facilitate the drug's manufacturing, storage, administration and delivery through oral mucosal tissue. The formulation can be used with a variety of oral transmucosal delivery dosage forms, such as a tablet, lozenge, lozenge on a stick, chewing gum, and buccal or mucosal patch. See, also Zhang et al, Clin Pharmacokinet. 2002; 41(9):661-80.
A number of transmucosal dosage forms for treatment of pain are presently in clinical development, examples of which include a buccal morphine spray and a buccal fentanyl spray (Generex Biotechnology) and an oral, fast-dissolving tablet of fentanyl for sublingual administration (Rapinyl™; Endo Pharmaceuticals). Two transmucosal fentanyl preparations which currently are commercially available are a fentanyl buccal tablet (FENTOA™; Cephalon) and ACTIQ® (Cephalon), an oral transmucosal form of fentanyl citrate administered as a lollipop, both are only indicated for the management of breakthrough cancer pain in patients who are already receiving and who are tolerant to opioid therapy for their underlying persistent cancer pain.
Although various oral drug delivery systems and dosage forms have been described for the treatment of various medical disorders and conditions, there remains a need for improved dosage forms, formulations and treatment regimens for use in the treatment of such medical disorders and conditions, e.g., for treatment of acute and breakthrough pain.
High bioavailability is critical for efficacious treatment with a variety of drugs including opioids, since higher doses of the drug must be packaged in the commercial dosage form to counter the generally poor bioavailability. An example is oxymorphone (Opana®) which has a bioavailability of 10% and therefore must be packaged with nine-fold more drug for the oral tablet versus the equivalent IV dosage form. Especially problematic are drug systems that have large amounts of residual drug left after full usage of the product. An example is IonSys™, which is an inefficient drug delivery system (transdermal) that requires three times the amount of drug packaged into the transdermal patch than is maximally delivered to the patient during regular usage. These inefficient systems, whether oral pills or patches, can be easily abused by injecting the drug intravenously and obtaining full bioavailability of the excess drug. If a given dosage form administered by the intended route of administration provides close to full bioavailability, then abusing the drug by intravenous injection does not provide for increased bioavailability and therefore this formulation may mitigate drug abuse and diversion.
There remains a need for improved dosage forms for oral drug delivery which provide more rapid and consistent onset of action, more consistent plasma concentrations and higher and more consistent bioavailability than currently available dosage forms. The present invention addresses this need.